What is Bitcoin?

AgnosticBoy

AgnosticBoy

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If you are familiar with stock market trends, just take a look at this chart which is in the midst of the bank failures, inflation, and recession concerns this year:


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Yep, since early March 2023, Bitcoin has jumped in price by $10,000 (from ~20k to ~30k). Keep in mind, I'm not offering financial advice by telling you to invest but I do recommend that people start doing their research on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Here's an interesting story. Apparently, there is a copy of a Bitcoin manifesto stored on some Apple Mac-OS computers.
Technologist Andy Baio says he accidentally discovered a copy of Satoshi Nakamoto's bitcoin white paper on his Apple Mac computer.

"While trying to fix my printer today, I discovered that a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018," Baio wrote in an April 5 blog post.

He said he asked over a dozen of his friends and fellow Mac users to confirm, and the document was there for every single one, the file called "simpledoc.pdf."

To find it, according to Baio's instructions, users can open the terminal and type the following command:
Code: 
open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

For those using macOS 10.14 or later, the document should immediately open in Preview as a PDF file, he explained.
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Source: Yahoo

On another site, I read one of the simplest descriptions for why Bitcoin exists or why it was created...
The white paper, titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System," was published in 2008. In it, the author lays out the framework for the underlying mechanisms that power bitcoin and enable transactions without a third party intermediary like a bank or financial institution.
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Source: Insider

That's a good place to start!
 
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I'll post videos that will give people a good idea of what Bitcoin is:

 
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Again, a bank is failing and Bitcoin is back on the rise again. Before, in these times people would say trust gold since it is a great store of value or hedge. Well, perhaps Bitcoin is becoming like gold, ie digital gold...

Cryptocurrencies jumped on Wednesday as investor concerns about the U.S. banking sector began to swell again, with First Republic Bank fighting for survival.

First Republic shares fell almost 50% to a record low on Tuesday after reporting a massive drop in deposits in the first quarter as customers pulled their money out following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. CNBC’s David Faber reported that the next few days are crucial for the company, as other banks and federal officials seek to pull together a rescue plan.
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Source: CNBC
 
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A good perspective on Bitcoin:
 
Here's some Bullish news that will help with Bitcoin adoption!..

Bitcoin rose more than 5% to $28,002.18, its highest level since early May, according to Coin Metrics. Ether added 3.5% to trade at $1,782.99.

Sentiment has been high in crypto since late last week, when BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world filed an application for what would be the first ever spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S.

Then Tuesday morning, a new crypto exchange backed by financial giants Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets and Citadel Securities announced that it has been live for several weeks trading bitcoin and ether.

With big names like BlackRock and Fidelity putting their crypto commitments on display, investors were optimistic Tuesday that some of the reputational risk of conducting any kind of crypto business – which for some investors has been a mental barrier to buying bitcoin – could start to fade.
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- CNBC

Crypto is looked at as fringe. But with big names getting into it, it will become the norm.

Here are some YouTube content creators that did a good job reporting on this story:

🍿🍾
 
The latest technology that's causing a big buzz is artificial intelligence (AI). Some in the crypto community are already thinking about how AI and crypto can work together. It would seem that Ai would need to be able to make transactions and for that it needs money that can operate easily on computer networks. BitMex co-founder makes the case that Bitcoin would be the most logical currency for Ai to use (just an excerpt):

Will artificial intelligence need currency to operate in the same way humanity does? BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes says yes—and that currency will be Bitcoin (BTC).

In an essay published on Thursday, Hayes outlined why Bitcoin will be “chosen by AIs” as the most logical money with which to calculate their economic decisions, and the best payment rail with which to carry them out.

For starters, AI will necessarily require a payment system that is “available at all times, digital, and completely automated.” That’s because it must constantly be able to pay for two critical forms of “food”—data and compute power—in order to “stay alive.”

According to Hayes, the “balkanised,” analogue banking sector cannot provide this sort of 24/7 service, but a blockchain-based system can.

“By using a blockchain-based payment system, [AI] … can also receive payments electronically in extremely small increments if needed,” he added.

An AI payment rail must also be censorship-resistant, and enshrined with “clear and transparent” rules from the outset, Hayes explained. This is to avoid the risk of deplatforming, which is “high and undesirable” for a robot that does not intrinsically understand human laws, or the “opaque and intentionally unintelligible” rules of the censorious banking system.
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Source: Decrypt
 
Bitcoin has yet to go through mass adoption involving people accepting it and using it like any other ordinary currency. I think two things are set to happen that might get the ball rolling on mass adoption...

1. One event set to happen is when the big investment institutions start accepting and trading Bitcoin. This is already in the process with some 5 or more big institutions, like Blackrock, filing to have spot Bitcoin ETFs.
With the Bitcoin halving event less than a year away, several financial giants have filed applications for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) — a scenario last seen before the 2020 to 2021 bull run.

However, on news that major financial institutions such as BlackRock, Fidelity, Valkyrie and others were filing applications to list a spot Bitcoin ETF, the price of BTC recovered to over $30,000, spurring investment into the crypto market again.

The recent new applications for Bitcoin spot market ETFs by some of the world’s most important asset managers demonstrates that there is investor, as well as issuer demand for Bitcoin, and that will only intensify. Apart from demonstrating increased institutional demand for Bitcoin, it will also attract new retail investors and encourage broader participation,” Ardoino said.
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Source: Cointelegraph

2. Legislation to be passed regulating the Crypto industry. I am registered on an stock trading exchange called Coinbase. Here are some details they emailed me (I think they'll publish this information on their site, and if I find it I'll post the link)...

Two bipartisan crypto bills advanced in Congress. How Democrats and Republicans came together, and what’s next for the proposed legislation.

Despite being the world’s biggest economy and home to many of the most innovative companies in the crypto industry (from mining and protocol startups to venture funds and major exchanges), the United States has lagged behind much of the world when it comes to crypto regulation. But a set of bills that would help set clear guardrails for the industry and establish consumer protections recently advanced in the House of Representatives, a key step in the long process of making them into laws.

First up is the “Financial Innovation and Technology Act for the 21st Century,” or FIT21, which advanced through the House Financial Services Committee and the House Committee on Agriculture last week with bipartisan support.

As the latest attempt at comprehensive crypto reform, the bill defines when a cryptocurrency is a commodity versus a security; empowers the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to regulate digital asset commodity spot markets; and establishes a pathway for crypto trading platforms to register with the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC).

The other key bill under consideration is the “Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act,” which would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins (cryptocurrencies pegged to a “stable” reserve asset, often the U.S. dollar) with the Federal Reserve creating a set of rules for their issuance.



The bill clarifies that stablecoins are payment instruments that are neither securities nor commodities. The proposed legislation also provides rules for reserves, transparency, compliance, and risk management, and creates a path for banks and non-banks to issue stablecoins with proper oversight.
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Source: part of a Coinbase Bytes article sent to me in email. If published online I'll post the link here.

Some market analysts are predicting that Bitcoin can reach over $100,000 per share (it's currently at ~$30k/share) as early as next year! :whistle:💲
 
A good explanation of Bitcoin (ironically from article that is critical of Bitcoin)...
Bitcoin was created (by a person or group that remains unidentified to this day) as a way to conduct transactions without the intervention of a trusted third party, such as a central bank or financial institution.

Bitcoin is not innocuous. Transactions are processed by “miners” using massive amounts of computing power in return for rewards in the form of Bitcoin. By some estimates, the Bitcoin network consumes as much energy as entire countries like Argentina and Norway, not to mention the mountains of electronic waste from specialized machines used for such mining operations that burn out rapidly.

Whatever Bitcoin’s eventual fate, its blockchain technology is truly ingenious and groundbreaking. Bitcoin has shown how programs running on networks of computers can be harnessed to securely conduct payments, within and between countries, without relying on avaricious financial institutions that charge high fees. For migrant workers sending remittances back to their home countries, for instance, such fees are a major burden. Technologies that make payments cheaper, quicker and easier to track would benefit consumers and businesses, facilitating both domestic and international commerce.

It has no intrinsic value and is not backed by anything. Bitcoin devotees will tell you that, like gold, its value comes from its scarcity—Bitcoin’s computer algorithm mandates a fixed cap of 21 million digital coins (nearly 19 million have been created so far). But scarcity by itself can hardly be a source of value. Bitcoin investors seem to be relying on the greater fool theory—all you need to profit from an investment is to find someone willing to buy the asset at an even higher price.
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Source: Brookings
 
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